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I have a Visual Studio Installer project for my C# application. It's been set up to uninstall any previous versions of my app, install the new version and then run the app once it's been installed. It works as expected up to the very end where it sits on the final 'Please Wait' stage:

Example

At this point, the new version of my app has has been installed and it is running quite happily, however the above screenshot just sits there (fully responsive) and it will only move onto the "Installation Complete" window once I've manually closed down the newly installed version of my application.

enter image description here

Have I done something wrong with the config of my Installer project? I don't want people to have to close the app down just to complete the install process, only to then have to manually run the app again! That's why I set up the installer to auto run the new version once it's been installed!

Uwe Keim
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Rawns
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2 Answers2

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The main issue that I haven't seen explicitly mentioned is that the run of your program at the end of the install is synchronous, so the installer waits for it to finish. If you don't want to change your project over to WiX there are at least two solutions:

  1. Instead of running the program directly as a custom action, create another small custom action that fires off your exe asynchronously and exits.

  2. Visual Studio setups don't let you set the async setting like other tools do, but you can do this by opening the MSI file (with Orca) and go to the CustomAction table. Most likely your custom action will have a type of 3090. If you change this to 3282 (adding 192) the custom action will be asynchronous and the install will finish.

PhilDW
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That seems to be a common problem when using a Visual Studio Installer project. The following question identifies a similar issue:

Visual Studio Installer > How To Launch App at End of Installer

The question following shows a solution, however with disagreement on how advisable it is:

Run exe after msi installation?

The solution I would recommend though would be, if possible, attempt to use WiX (http://wixtoolset.org/) to author your Windows Installer. The learning curve may be a little steeper than compared to Visual Studio Installer projects, but once you're comfortable with it you'll find you're exposed to a lot more of the capabilities of Windows Installer along with having a series of additional features provided by the Wix Toolset. The documentation for WiX gives an example of how to achieve what you're trying to do:

http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/howtos/ui_and_localization/run_program_after_install.html

Community
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Alan Low
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  • Thanks for the answer. For the moment, I've just removed the 'start after install' part so the installer is completing successfully. Ideally thought, I'd still like my app to auto start after install so I'll check WiX out. I only really have a single Exe to dump in Program Files (plus a start menu shortcut) so hopefully there will be some tutorials or pointers on how to achieve this using WiX. – Rawns Feb 19 '17 at 22:40
  • No problem at all. The documentation here https://www.firegiant.com/wix/tutorial/ goes into a lot of detail, so much so that it may be a little overwhelming, but it explains Windows Installer concepts very well and having a good understanding of them is important if you want to keep your installation serviceable, maintainable and upgradable. – Alan Low Feb 19 '17 at 23:31